Professor Crespo da Silva received his undergraduate engineering degree from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and his M. Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford. He was a National Research Council postdoctoral research associate at NASA Ames Research Center in California working on satellite dynamics, which was the subject of his doctoral thesis. He joined the Rensselaer faculty in 1986 after rising through the ranks from assistant professor to professor in the aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics department at the University of Cincinnati. On a sabbatical leave during the first half of 1983 he continued research work on helicopter rotor blade dynamics in  the Aeromechanics Laboratory at Ames Research Center. His  main interests are dynamics (including structural dynamics, satellite dynamics, and helicopter dynamics) and nonlinear oscillations. He has a number of publications in these areas, and received research grants from NASA, the U. S. Air Force, the U. S. Army Research Office, and the National Science Foundation. He is a member of the American Academy of Mechanics, Senior Member of AIAA, and Fellow of the ASME.